Operation Chiaki: Day 19, 20,21 (Osaka)
What can I say? The weather though clear for the past 3 days (for only short durations then followed by lots of cloudy skies) I’ve been spending it going to Osaka back and fourth.
Operation Chiaki: Day 18 (Himeji)
Definitely worth my day!
Decided to pay Himeji a visit on a spur of the moment choice this morning since it was sunny, I had some extra days on my hand since Yoshino was done, Miyajima was not sunny today and it was only 30 minutes away from Kyoto by Shinkansen!
Operation Chiaki: Day 17 (Yoshino) and Kyoto at night
So far I believe I've been hiking 8 km per day on average. Yoshino was no exception except that it was a 15 km hike which I decided to pass up and only go 1/3 of the way instead. Though I shot with film for Yoshino.
Operation Chiaki: Day 15 (Takao) and Day 16 (Yoshimine-dera)
Day 15 at Takao
No I didn’t go back to mount Takao in Tokyo, it appears that Kyoto also has it’s own Takao, its actually a mountainous region. You can basically ride the JR bus all the way to the end of Takao but the real places to visits are the temples as Kozenji.
Unfortunately it was an extremely cloudy day, making any photos I take totally boring! It was so bad, none of the photos I took are worth posting up hence I decided to chuck it up to my second failure since Nikko.
Day 16 at Yoshiminedera
Now this was a diferent story!
Operation Chiaki: Day 14 (Kyoto)
"Today was the longest day yet" was my last thought before falling asleep last night.
It all began innocently enough, waking up at 6am, heading out to the Western region at 7am. The weather was cloudy and cold though it was forecast to be sunny. But since I was up already and here, I tried to make the best of it. Using film and all my old Provia 100F supplies, (I never did like that damn film) I tried to enjoy myself.
Operation Chiaki: Day 13 (Kyoto)
Today was rather short as the sun soon disappeared behind clouds with only a few short hours of daylight. Then followed by rain till now. These few shots are what are I took for today. Tomorrow I’ll be visiting the Western region, something I’ve never did in my last trip.
Operation Chiaki: Day 12 (Kyoto)
Well here I am again. This really brings back memories, the long train ride, the hustle and bustle, heck even the smell is great!
Though I had forgotten that check in time is 3pm and not 1pm. With that much time to kill, I left all my luggage and just took my D700 and 50mm f/1.8 to the Toji temple where I was informed that they were having their monthly (only on the 21st of each month) flea market there.
Operation Chiaki: Day 11 (Tokyo towers and kenrokuen)
The weather forecast said it would be a sunny day so made Tokyo Tower my target today.
Standing at 330 meters tall, it is one of the tallest structure in Tokyo. Going up cost about 1470 Yen for both the Main observatory and Special deck.
Operation Chiaki : Day 4 (Nikko) Photos
Finally have the scans back from Yodobashi though it did cost quite an amount but their workmanship is worth the money.
But being a cheapskate, I’ll scan the rest of them when I’m back in Malaysia. Here are the shots from Nikko, it was raining pretty bad that day so I took a rather unorthodox method to getting my shots.
Operation Chiaki: Day 10 (Jinbocho)
Yumiko Readman, yes I have a thing for girls wearing glasses or meganekko.
Jinbocho
Jinbocho was more than I could chew off. The whole area does not consist of a stretch of road with bookstores. It consist of 4 freaking city blocks! There are so many second hand book shops that it would take me a week to explore them!
Operation Chiaki: Day 8 and 9(mount Takao)
Day 8:
Was just wondering around again in Shinjuku to check out that Nikkor AIS 105mm f/1.8 lens! Pretty sweet deal and the condition is pretty good! It was raining the whole day though, don’t have any photos to show for today.
Day 9:
As forecast, the weather is fantastic today! Sunny sunshine all the way! Today I went out using my Nikon F4 so no photos for now till I’ve have them developed and scanned. I managed to shoot 4 full rolls of film today. Pity that there wasn’t enough daylight time for more shooting (It gets dark at around 5pm here).
Operation Chiaki: Day 6 (Kofu) and 7 (Tokyo)
Yesterday was a fantastic day! As a result today’s planned journey to Nikko was scrapped in order to fully recover for Wednesday’s journey to Mount Takao.
The started off wonderful with lots of good weather as you can see it was clear sky during that morning.
Definitely no regret bringing my notebook with me this time, providing me access to all my usual online resources especially weather forecasting. This has allowed me to adjust my adjust my plans accordingly.
Operation Chiaki: Day 5
No new updates today. The weather was indeed crappy but at least not cold.
I went down to Yodobashi to have the film developed and scanned, it was the same guy at the counter still from 2 years before. Don’t think he remembers me but at least he was a lot more polite and could understand my crappy Japanese and replied in English! So yeah great improvement.
While there (with incredible levels of willpower to NOT buy anything) I found the Casio PRG-40 watch was selling for 14,700 yen only! (which was RM558.6! Malaysia was selling it for RM700~800) . Another interesting surprise awaited me, since I was a foreigner duty tax was waived by simply showing my passport. Yipee do! Making it 14,000 Yen (RM532) so duty tax was 4.7% percent? (more…)
Operation Chiaki: Day 4
Now I know why the Japanese love to take really hot baths at the end of the day. It really helps to soothe your mind and body. I had one hell of a rough day getting to Nikko and the trip was really not worth it. It was cloudy the whole day with occasional drizzle making photography rather hard.
First off, all the autumn leaves in the mountain above Chousen-onsen are totally gone! Also the weather was so bad that anything above that point was literally shrouded in mist. It was like being at Silent Hill minus the fear. Realizing that any high altitude shooting was not possible, I move my shooting location a little downward near the river before Chouse-onsen. But shooting opportunities were far and few, managing to only shoot off 2 rolls of film. I’ll be having them developed tomorrow since the bad weather is going to be like this till Sunday. I’ll visit Nikko again next Monday.
Which brings me to another matter, I had mistakenly said that the All Nikko pass only allowed one travel to Nikko and back ONCE only, this is INCORRECT! You can travel back and fourth between Nikko and Asakusa for 4 days and ride buses for free! So this ticket is a steal! My final day will be the 16th which is next Monday.
I’ll try to upload my developed photos tomorrow but if I remember, they will need one day to developed and have them scanned in, I prefer to let them do it as their service and quality is top-notch!
Operation Chiaki: Day 3
After acclimating myself to Japan’s Autumn weather, it was important to get the All Nikko Pass since the trip is tomorrow.
This is the market I bought my supplies.
Operation Chiaki:Day 1 and 2
The flight
“Bless the lady working at the check in counter!”
That’s all I can say after landing at Narita. I checked in last night and asked for a seat up front so I would have more leg room. She informed me that all the seats at the front had already been taken but she managed to put me into a seat that would be great for sleeping.
Operation Chiaki
No use putting it off any further. I’ll be going on another long vacation since 2007. Once again I’ll be going to Japan for a second time.
Some may wonder why Japan was my choice for a long vacation again. Well a number of other locations were considered but there was that nagging feeling.
A gal’s paradise from Kino!
Thanks to fuminari for informing me about this new magazine. Its the final one for 2009.
Sweet little thing is worth the money you pay for it. It has one of the best pics of the race queens so far for this year.
(Also, please excuse the image quality here. I took them right before I went to sleep so I wasn’t in the best of moods to setup the lighting properly)
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